Data
by NixKat
Summary: Brainiac's possession left Richie with concerns. It left his body with much more dangerous mementos. Mementos that could either make his future bright or lead him to ruin. (Rewrite/AU of The Grid) (Static Shock/Justice League/Teen Titans/Young Justice) (Some Foul Language/Violence/ Suggestive Content)
1. Chapter 1: Afterthoughts

_"I sense no trace of Brainiac within him."_

Richie wanted to believe the Martian Manhunter's diagnosis.

He really did.

But Brainiac had been inside him in both mind and body. The supervirus had filled his enhanced brain to make him a living processor. It had overshadowed his mind with its own personality and stored information until it nearly extinguished his own individual self. Brainiac's accumulated knowledge was still in Richie's head even if he couldn't feel the presence of the malicious program itself. He knew what the horns of Xixians looked like. He was fluent in the common scientific language of the settlers of the fourth moon of the gas giant Talenda. He'd heard the musical screams of the Radddd collective in his nightmares.

It also didn't escape his notice that the only piece of technology the Justice League removed from his flesh was the thin control disk fused to the skin of his nape. Richie remembered the metallic plates and circuitry that covered his skin as the program used him to build the tech it needed. From the data leftover in his brain, he was painfully aware that Brainiac liked to use backup plans in case of failure. Any piece of circuitry made by or even just in contact with the supervirus for a short amount of time could be infected with its code. The League should have scanned his body with x-rays or with magnetic imaging and removed any cybernetic present. But no all that happened was his lil buddy BacPac's entire programming getting deleted and a quick mind scan.

No, he couldn't believe Manhunter's diagnosis.

He thought about telling the big name heroes about their mistake. That thought was stamped down by his self-preservation instinct that reminded him that the League was willing to do whatever they had to do to stop Brainiac. Sure it was more logical to sacrifice one life for billions (or much more than that since Brainiac is a space-faring monster). But it was his life and alternatives to his cessation looked a lot better than cold logic. Surely there were things he could do to resist the supervirus better the next time it tried to absorb the planet's data.

A cold shiver ran down his spine and he sat up in bed at the frightful conclusion that squirmed up from the depths of his mind. Brainiac would come back eventually. The evil program was one of the most intelligent beings in the universe and could regenerate from even a single line of its base code. Richie knew from having it inside him that Brainiac preferred to use a network of drones to complete tasks. Somewhere out there in the far reaches of space, there are likely drone ships of Brainiac that were yet to be encountered. Or ships that no world has met and survived.

Richie climbed out of bed and started putting on his Gear costume. He needed to get to the gas station... to his lab. He needed to build something that could scan his insides.


	2. Chapter 2: Tri-Corner Chartreuse

Gear flew over the city on his way to the Gas Station of Solitude. His mind swarmed with plans and fears: what he needed to do first, where to get supplies, how long it would take, what to do if he found something, the possible outcomes if things went wrong removing those hypothetical things. BacPac swerved him well, running crash avoidance while he was distracted. He touched down in front of the building and used his key to enter, flipping on the lights and he started to set up.

Somewhat thankfully he had the time to work without interruption, today and tomorrow school was closed due to the chaos caused by Brainiac's rampage through the city, and after that was the weekend. A lot of people had been injured by vehicles and buildings suddenly vanishing leading to major traffic accidents. Richie avoided looking at the missing persons reports that were cropping up in the wake of the disaster, he already knew how many people had been digitized and absorbed. He knew everything about them because their data was inside his head. Their last moments of terror flashed behind his eyelids every time he blinked. Humans, animals, entire murdered worlds that Brainiac left ghosts of in his mind. If the ship hadn't been absolutely destroyed, he could have reversed the digitization process but he didn't have the energy for it at the time and the ship was too dangerous to leave intact. A niggling thought suggested that he was too dangerous to leave intact as well.

Instead of thinking too hard about it, he spent the day going back and forth rooting through his room and lab for pieces of alien technology. Silvery blue lumps and disks emblazoned with Brainiac's logo were hidden in the hardware of his desktops and his room phone. His skin tingled when he touched them, like something in his body was reacting the solid masses of nanites. Probably more nanites, he thought. Unsure of what to do with them yet he put them in a tupperware bowl and put it in the deep freezer under the venison and wild turkey. The cold should prevent them from activating on their own in the meantime.

Richie wiped the memory of every computer he had access to while under the supervirus's control- school, home, local library (through breaking and entering after closing). He gave BacPac the very important job of reprogramming the other devices. Really the little robot's joy of getting to help was the only thing that brought him some happiness and that was only due to the neural connection that Richie shared with his creation. From his end of their link, BacPac got a few extra helpings of apprehensive dread that showed itself in overreaction to stimuli. Richie played chill on the shock-vox for Virgil but he had too many thoughts zipping around his head. Unpleasant ones and frightening questions that needed answers.

It didn't take him long to build a functioning homemade Magnetic Resonance Imaging device, but longer than he'd've liked to make one that wouldn't cause pieces of metal to move when he turned it on. It did require the sacrifice of that perfectly good forty inch tv he salvaged from the dump the week before he'd been taken over, a printer also from the dump, and a metal detector wand 'borrowed' from the nearby Hemingway high last year. Both his work computers and BacPac's shielding were good enough that they wouldn't be affected by the power of the magnet as it's electromagnetic waves passed through his body during the scan.

The results of the scan came out pretty clear for the imaging qualities of a ten-year-old school television. What Richie saw turned his face several shades whiter until he got a firm grip on himself. His spine and braincase were entirely outfitted with complex circuitry. There were also at least two unidentified sacks of metallic fluid in his abdominal cavity, one just under his diaphragm and the other seemingly inside of his stomach. The discovery was… concerning at the very least and as soon as possible he needed to get some clean unused medical supplies before he could collect some proper samples. Or for BacPac to collect samples while he was anesthetized.

Being anesthetized sounded great right now. But he didn't have the right mix of chemical compounds to safely knock himself out at the moment. So the next best thing was getting drunk off his ass and maybe a good roll in the hay to get his mind off of things.

…

A chartreuse sign flicked in the dark of the Dakota docks. The bedazzled grime surrounding the back alley club brought back fond memories of self-discovery and less fond memories of bloodshed and arson. Still, it was the best place that Richie knew of to find someone who swung the same way as him and they didn't card for drinks as long as you didn't look ten. Since it was a weeknight there wasn't a whole lot of activity. Not like it would be on the weekend with queers and queens from all over the city and even out of the state to party and socialize.

He knocked on the heavy dented steel door three times. A slot opened and glowing purple eyes peered through, it gave him a bit of a start but the club wasn't terribly far from where the Bang went down. Richie flipped his fingers into a clumsy isosceles triangle. The Bang Baby on the other side of the door grunted and undid the locks. The blond's face tinged pink with embarrassment at the thought that the twins might call him out for not visiting since he'd started superheroing. Darnit.

"Long time no see Twinkletoes," The doorman pulled open the door and his deep rumbling voice was so familiar. The purplish-black skin and canine head were making identification more difficult than it should have dogman laughed and handed him a white wristband that read 'UNDER 18', "Smells like the Bang got you too, huh?"

The laugh like rich molasses on a hot summer morning, the bright blue eyeshadow, and turquoise jewelry, the light silk dress suddenly hit him like a fireball. His green eyes went wide and he looked the furry drag queen up and down again, "Bast?! Is that you?! Oh god, you're even more of a furry."

"Yeah, was on the docks takin' care of that new skin-head group that was tryin' ta getta holda what used to be Rasta Rebel turf. We ain't lose anyone like some of the other gangs, thank Ra. I was in the hospital for awhile and then I was out of town for the Mid-West Drag beauty pageant for a while, won third thankyouverymuch, and then community college kept me away from the club too. Then I started mutating a few months ago and well shit happens ya know?" The canine-like Bang Baby booted the door closed and locked it. He grabbed a bright purple wristband that read 'BANG BABY' from a fishbowl on a stool next to the door and tossed it to Richie. "So did you get your buddy home ok that night? And what power did you get anyway?"

Richie's face fell as the implications of his fellow hood's questions hit him like a speeding truck. All the Tri-Corners knew that he'd been to the docks to help Virgil, sure he'd gone when he knew everything had calmed down and well after the blast was over… (which thinking about it didn't really mean he'd been safe from any lingering traces of the stuff in the air but he'd be damned before he'd let Virgil get in trouble or worse for something he'd been forced into). They knew that the two of them were Bang Babies. His second thoughts followed up with: oh god they know what I look like in spandex they probably know. His third thoughts chimed in to remind him that he had put on some weight recently and was certainly buffer (and ok maybe a little softer in the belly than he'd like added since his family had stopped having dance classes another chain of thought, but fuck that train of thought went a fifth one) than when they last saw him in tights so maybe they didn't know? He opened his mouth and said something that not technically a lie, "Yeah, I found him passed out and carried him home. I guess my reflexes and senses are a lot better since then, not much use to me since the rents haven't been able to afford my ballet classes in a while."

"Luck of the draw man, luck of the draw. Be thankful that you still look normal." Bast sighed wistfully. Noticing that Richie had yet to slip on the purple band and he gestured for the younger teen to do so. "Bands are mandatory for Bang Baby identification in the club since a… messy incident with a normal passing fucker three months ago. Shit took a while to clean up after."

"Seems sensible. 'K man I'm gonna go get wasted, see ya again on the way out." Richie walked down the short hall to the club proper. He was right about there not being a lot of traffic during the near barren dance floor was deep magenta and glittered in the low lighting with a decade and a half's worth of encrusted body glitter. Chartreuse booths with glass tables lined the right-hand wall and did, in fact, hold a few customers either chatting and drinking or eating and drinking. On the left-hand side of the club the identical twins Spinner and Sparkle served at the long bar like always, the brother on one end mixing and serving drinks and the sister on the other cooking up and serving food. The brother's tentacles and his sister's spindly extra arms only seemed to help them work faster. There was an old white-haired man at the bar that Richie had never seen before, he was wrapped up in bandages like a mummy but damn if he didn't have some nice muscle tone.

The smell of the grill reminded the teen that he'd forgotten to eat lunch what with all of the emotional distress and medical equipment building. Richie sat down on the grill side about to order when a hot spatula held by an angry Spinner caught his attention.

"Where you been white boy?!" The older Japanese girl glared at him. Her spider-like limbs continued to flip burgers and cook fries as she did so, a feat aided by the gemlike eyes he'd spotted at the back of her head as he approached the bar. Sparkle, Richie observed was giving him some serious side-eye as he polished some beer mugs. "You missed so many meetings. We worried that the gas killed you like so many of the others! If Babe, you know Bunyan, ain't spot you and your buddy at the community center we wouldn't know! All you babies being so stressful and not checking in, gonna give me white hairs!"

"Ah, sorry Spinner," Richie rubbed the back of his neck and had the decency to look sheepish about his lack of involvement. Sure the Chartreuses didn't expect him to take on anyone in a fight since the strip club incident, but they did have some less shady community programs that they could use an extra hand for. And heck it was nice to have a place where he didn't have to pretend to be straight 90% of the time around people. "I've been really busy lately helping my bro out with a big project."

They talked for hours catching up with each other and what was going on with the Chartreuses and Richie got progressively more buzzed with super sugary girlie drinks. Since it wasn't his first time drinking and he didn't feel like going home for dinner he also made sure to take advantage of the food discount for Chartreuse members. Getting some grease in his stomach to cut the effect of the alcohol (no need to get shit faced when he still had to walk home). In the middle of his second double cheeseburger, a familiar face coming out of the conference room caught his eye.

"Incog?" Richie asked incredulously. The white passing teen's red eyebrows shot up in disbelief and then he walked through the bar like it was air. The thought crossed Richie that all of the Chartreuses might be Bang Babies and it was probably a good edge on the remaining gangs. He also thought that Incog looked a but scruffier and leaner than how he used to.

"Twinkletoes!" The other boy hugged Richie tight before taking a seat next to him. It was good to see the other boy, they'd gone through so much together. Hell, Richie owed Incog his life for helping him get out of that NeoNazi compound. They got caught up. Turns out that the Bang had other shitty side effects other than death and permanent disfigurement. The Bang could give you shitty vampire weaknesses. Which… really made as much sense as anything else. After a while, Incog, who was going by Fade now, left with a friend called Tech (who also got super smarts from The Bang) to go get some more work done before sunrise. He'd left a phone number for Richie to contact him with if he wanted to hang out and/or meet his new gang.

Well fed and reasonably tipsy Richie scanned the other patrons for someone to make out with to end his night. He mentally crossed out all the patrons that were obviously too old, like the yummy muscle mummy at the bar. Distracted by eyeing the eye candy of some of the new faces chatting it up in the booths Richie failed to notice the approach of an old classmate until he'd wrapped a warm muscular arm around his shoulder. Richie didn't need to look at Francis to identify him, the blonde knew the older teen's smokey burnt rubber and hair scent from fighting him as Gear often enough.

"Heh. Hey Twink," Francis said in a way that sent a shudder down Richie's spine that he blamed on alcohol and hormones. He knew exactly what Francis was playing at by shortening his handle in that way. Really, the other Bang baby only called him by any variation of Twinkletoes when he wanted something; usually, Francis preferred to call him variations of 'Princess', though there was one straight week that the pyro only referred to him as a 'Sugarplum Fairy'. "Ain't seen your scrawny ass over this way since the Bang."

Richie turned his head and stared blankly at the other Bang Baby. "I've been busy," He replied as flatly as he could. "'Sides, I distinctly recall somebody harassing two of my best friends, setting one on fire and burning off my shirt. I dunno Frankie maybe I've been avoiding an asshole?"

The redhead's cocky smirk dropped into the beginning of an unamused sneer. Both of them were very aware of the twins' attention and how Francis would be getting another talking to because they hadn't heard the bit about his shirt. Frieda and Virgil were outsiders, friendly to him but harassing a friend of a Chartreuse was different than threatening a fellow Chartreuse. Richie was also quite aware of the probability of the hothead giving him a shiner by the end of the week. Entirely because snitches get stitches and Hotstreak was very good at holding grudges.

Francis leaned in and whispered into Richie's ear, "I was trying to be fucking subtle, Gear. So how 'bout we go upstairs or do you want everyone in this joint to know everything?"

Richie's heart skipped a beat even as he tried to keep up a smug appearance. He swallowed thickly as his thoughts raced. Strings of expletives preceded and followed questions such as: was Hotstreak going to blackmail him? Did he know Static's secret identity too? Did this potential blackmail material cancel out the leverage that Richie used to hold? Or were they even now and he didn't have a way to protect Virgil and Freida if Hotstreak went after them again? The only thing Richie was reasonably certain of was that Hotstreak wouldn't tell any of the other Bang Baby thugs because if he did and Richie wound up dead because of it (which was very likely given how gangbangers tend to really get rid of problems) then Hotstreak would get far worse than a talking to for endangering a fellow Chartreuse (because like hell he wouldn't leave something behind to take the asshat down with him). And frankly, they had history, he'd hope that Frankie didn't want him dead.

When he came back to reality Richie found himself sitting cross-legged on the bed in the pink room in the upstairs of the club. Richie had some fond memories of this room, more than a few interesting encounters happened on those hot pink sheets. Frankie lay at the foot of the bed like a French girl ready to be painted and wearing only his goofy heart-print boxers. The blond felt his face turning red, partly because he was tipsy and Francis was very attractive and partly because he was a little ticked off that the other teen thought he could use the mostly naked negotiator tactic again. After the disaster that was the strip club incident, he'd promised himself that he'd never let tits get him into that much trouble again, no matter how nice they were.

"Ya know next time someone says that they caught on to your secret you really shouldn't panic and space out." Hotstreak said with a laugh. As potentially dangerous as the situation was Richie couldn't help the way his heart fluttered at the other teen's hooded eyes and cocky smirk and just how the way he was laying helped guide the eye along to highlight his best assets… Damnit, focus! Blackmail material, secret identity revealed. "Just sayin' leads a dude into thinking he got it right, Princess."

"All right I'm Gear," Richie confessed with narrow eyes. He crossed his arms over his chest and tried to look intimidating. "So what do you want?"

"As far as the thing with Sons of Odin we're square. That's what your secret identity is worth, period."

"That's...fair" And it was. Richie didn't like it and it left him with the problem with Hotstreak potential hurting Frieda and Virgil or worse because he felt like it. Hmmm.. it's possible that he could make a memory erasing nano-virus to fix this? Richie felt like that was the kinda world endangering superscience that he should run by his best friend first. And really this wasn't the sort of thing he wanted to tell V about in the first place.

"But, for Hawkin's being Sparky you owe me instead." Richie's pulse remained steady. There was no shock. No tuggings of his conscious as the vast and scattered output of his mutated mind crystallized into an arrow of thought: he could easily end Hotstreak by emptying the pseudo organ full of nanomachines under his diaphragm while in close proximity to dissolve the other teen's flesh. Hotstreak's heat would only fuel the growth and speed of-

"Ok! I'm just askin ya to look the other way when Carmen and Ferret are up to some petty shit, jeez no need for the glowy death glare," Francis grumbled snapping Richie away from that surprisingly homicidal thought. Was it possible that Brainiac's remnants were already trying to influence him? He regained his composure while pretending to ignore the mostly naked superthug slowly and deliberately advance on him. In the lamplight he could see the faint scars on Francis's shoulders and chest from the thing with the Son's of Odin, part of him really wanted to run his fingers over them.

"Really that's all you're asking for?" Richie inquired, his face flushing as the redhead sidled up between his legs to stare him down. Or to further seduce him and, well, he did plan to get laid tonight, so stopping a good looking rugged guy from being sexy and mildly threatening was not something he felt like doing. Still, he persisted his line of questioning if only to be 100% sure of what the other bang baby was asking. "You know my best friend's greatest secret, something that gives you a fuck lotta leverage over a downright supergenius such as moi, but yer gonna use it up on just, 'Cut my buddies some slack'?"

Hotstreak laughed, not in the taunting way that he'd done in school when mocking his victims but in that breathy genuinely amused way that slipped out when Francis actually found one of his jokes to be funny. And hot damn it was really starting to heat him up. "We're not buddies but yeah, 'sides you already look the other way when I'm not setting fucks on fire."

"Point." Richie shrugged. He wasn't a snitch if no one was getting or going to be hurt. Besides, you can't just rat on folks in your gang, even if they were just backup muscle. "Deal, just leave V and Freida alone alright?"

"Eh sure, I won't fuck up your boyfriend-" Hotstreak ignored his fellow Tricorner's grumbling about his friendship being completely platonic. "And I don't plan to mess around Frieda anytime soon, it's not fun since she got superpowers."

Richie blinked. And reprocessed that sentence as his fellow mutant distractingly started pulling off his clothes. He blinked again, "What."


	3. Chapter 3: Meetings

Richie stayed in the hot pink bed for a good while after Francis had fallen asleep. Partly because he was tired from everything that happened in the past what? five, six days? His body was a mess and so was his mind after all of that. BacPac already had his instructions, he could prep for what Richie needed to do all on his own. And partly because Hotstreak was a… more interesting lover than Francis had ever been in the past and Richie could practically feel "I can't believe it's not" sunburns forming on his chest and hips and thighs. It was rude to just ditch someone immediately after shagging them. If there was anything his mom and aunts had taught him during The Talk, it was to be considerate to your lovers' feelings. To an extent.

Besides, he wasn't in a hurry and Francis was comfortably toasty.

Eventually, though, he did have to go home. If only for a decent rest in his own bed. And he had chores he'd been neglecting which needed to be done before he started cutting himself open. With practiced precision, Richie slipped out from Hotstreak's grasp and left the older Bang Baby spooning with a pillow and gave him a kiss goodbye. Quickly he pulled his clothes back on ignoring Hotstreak lazily watching him with sleepy eyes and left the pink room and went back downstairs to the club area.

The clock read 4:20 am. And the place was pretty dang empty. The bar was locked down, cleaned up and the twins gone home. Bast, who went by Anubis now Richie reminded himself, waited by the door on a stool reading a book on human physiology. The other patrons long gone, meaning that the only reason Anubis was still sticking around was that management was still around. Richie was almost outside when he heard the door to the Tri Corner's leader's office creek open.

"Twinkletoes, good to see you're back." Richie froze at the sound of the boss's voice. Wise Son hardly looked like he changed in the past two years. Still tall and decently solid with that cool cap covering short cropped hair. Sure there were a few more scars standing out against his dark skin but those were the kind that added character to a face. He was also still wearing those cool reflective shades. The biggest difference was the clothes, at some point he'd started dressing like Blade in business casual. An… interesting choice, Richie'd never pegged him as a leather daddy before.

"Hey, Wise... long time no see." Richie said nervously. He didn't get a chance to say anything else when the boss raised a hand and signaled him to shush. And he did. Because unlike pretty much every other member of the Tri Corners, Wise actually took the gang thing seriously.

"Next Friday. Five thirty p.m.. My office." Wise Son stated as walked behind the bar and pulled a root beer from the fridge. "And ya lily white ass better not be late. Shirkin' work ain't good for ya health."

"...Sure thing, boss." Richie left with a new worry on the pile. He returned the wristbands to Anubis, said his goodbyes, and started walking.

The way back to the Gas station was nice, late enough to not run into anyone but the occasional sleeping homeless person and pleasantly quiet in the way that a slumbering metropolis was. The motor on his scooter gave a gentle hum as he left it idle outside the Abandoned Gas Station of Solitude. BacPac had finished the clean room prep, making use of the basement of the gas station that Richie himself hadn't known existed before and copious amounts of scavenged and sanitized plastic. The basement probably didn't exist before, but... Dakota was a strange city if you paid close attention to it. Things had a habit of showing up even when they shouldn't. Like the local mountain range right in the middle of the plains or the secret basement of the Tri-Corner Chartreuse out on the docks. It's best not to look a gift horse in the mouth.

Satisfied with the progress on project "Never Again", Richie turned his sights to home and trying to get a decent amount of sleep before the operation. In the final stretch, he turned off the motor of his scooter and went manual. He didn't need Buddy to hear him coming and get excited and wake up the whole house again. Scooter safely docked by the garage, Richie climbed the tree in the backyard up to his balcony, forever happy that his parents let him claim the easiest room to sneak into and out of.

"Sup, boyo," Richie froze with the sliding door to the balcony in one hand and a foot in his room at the random Scottish voice in his room. There weren't any Scottish people in his family, dad's side was Irish and mom's were Swedish and Norwegian. And why was there even someone in his… "Down here boyo."

Down there on his bed was his adorable little white...Scottish… terrier, Buddy. His dog can talk. Sure, why the fuck not? His best friend could fart thunder, he just fucked a dude who could breathe fire, and he'd been possessed by an alien computer program for a week. A talking dog was practically tame in comparison.

"Yer ma wants ta have a go at ye and is waitin in the kitchen." Buddy yipped. The Scottish accent still didn't make sense because Buddy was born in Idaho just like him. "I wouldn't keep yer waitin if aye was ye."

Resigned to his fate Richie left his room and snuck downstairs to the kitchen. The lights were off but his mom had a single candle lit on the table. His thoughts batted back and forth about the dog and how much trouble he was in and reasons why.

Maggie Foley calmly sipped hot tea in her plain pink nightgown, red hair allowed to fall wildly around her face without her usual headband to hold it back. For some reason, there was a birch stick on the table. She didn't look up as he approached but she pointed at the seat opposite her own. "Sit, Richard, let's have a talk."

"Heeeey… Mom, how are you?" Richie said hesitantly as he sat down.

"I'm stressed that my son has been keeping secrets from me and concerned that he apparently spent a week possessed by an unknown entity that was clearly hurting him." Maggie replied, taking a sip of her tea. "How are you, son?"

"Um, I'm… better than I was." Richie said finding his own cup of tea rather fascinating. It was honey and rose flavored, the sort his mom liked to drink after arguing with his dad. She'd always said it had calming properties. He shrugged, "Found out that Buddy can talk, so that's a thing."

Maggie sighed and put down her cup. "Ok, Richie I know I said that you could tell me anything, that there's no need for secrets between us."

"Like the talking dog?"

"Or the robot that I see on the back of one of the local superheroes in the news having a charging port in the living room."

"I kinda dropped the ball hiding that," Richie mumbled after a sip of tea. "So, um, I'm a superhero. If that's what this is about."

"Thanks for the confession." Maggie smiled. "But this is more about the possession and you feeling like you could talk to me about it. And also...it doesn't really feel fair to tell you to spill all your secrets and not let you in on any of mine."

"Sorry. It's just being a superhero is well dangerous and I kinda didn't want you to worry. I mean, it's different than dad being a cop, he's got back up at least. And doesn't have to fight like world-ending threats."

"When did you and Virgil take on something like that?"

"Um… well see the Watchtower, that space station that the Justice League uses, kinda got its batteries drained so they asked Static for a jump and we kinda ended up running into uh Brainiac while the League was out."

"Doesn't Superman fight Brainiac? I remember hearing about it on the news a few years back."

"Yeeeah. He wasn't in that day and it was pretty much just me and Static fending off killer robots and the station itself trying to kill us. And we did pretty well, even got congratulated by the League. Unfortunately, no one, including me, considered that the super infectious alien computer virus might infect my robot (his name is BacPac by the way). And then… well, Brainiac infected me by way of BacPac."

"Possessed by a computer bug is not something you hear every day." His mother said, nodding sagely and giving his hand a reassuring squeeze. She pulled a thick, aged, handmade and heavily annotated book onto the table. "So, let's work on stopping that from happening again, ok? And while we do that I'll teach you about our real family history."

When it became clear that the boy wasn't coming back downstairs for quite a while, the bandaged man decided to leave. He paid for his meal with money given to him by the very generous client and even left a tip for the mutated bartenders. Then he stepped out of the warm bar into the chill of the Dakota night, he'd learned everything he needed to know about the target.

Near the water, he spotted the client smoking under a lamppost and talking with a small well-dressed woman. The man approached quietly, invisible as any other ninja in spite of his bandages and injuries from a recent tangle with some angry teenage nature gods. As he approached he amended his thoughts, the woman was not at all small she only appeared so next to the potbellied viking in a suit. She was otherwise a beautiful Black woman only a few inches shorter than himself at best (and he was not a small man himself) and rather muscular in her own right.

Neither of them were actually smoking, the thing in the big man's mouth looked far more like a lollipop stick than a cigarette and it certainly wasn't lit. The man simply exhaled thick black smoke while the woman inhaled it. Right before he dramatically revealed himself the smoke turned and looked at him with a bright red eye before dissipating ominously.

"Mr. Wilson! How nice of you to join us." The client said with a goofy grin, taking the candy out of his mouth and bowing flamboyantly. "Have you met my friend, Mama Benu? She's the best witch this side of the Mississippi."

"I've not met many American witches," Mr. Wilson said, politely bowing and kissing the woman's offered hand. He ignored the way her eyes glowed like a cat's "My magical knowledge is limited to that of the Orient."

"Oh, you one of dem ninjas?" The woman called Mama Benu gave him a predatory look over. Then she gave a dismissive snort, apparently not satisfied by what she saw (something Wilson narrowed his eye at) and said, "I've heard folks like you are tryin' ta dig in on the coasts. Will we be workin' together?"

"I'm afraid not." Mr. Wilson said politely. "I'm flattered by your offer but the target is… not up to my standards for tutelage, even if he wasn't out of practice a dancer is not the same as a martial artist. Not to mention that the boy seems to have a tremendous amount of bad luck and in my industry luck is something that counts."

The pair of supernatural beings (really the client didn't make much of an effort to hide his fangs in that doofy grin) watched him silently for a few heartbeats. Then the client cut the tension with, "Ah, that's cool. And you don't have to return the leftover cash."

"Oh?"

"Wasn't mine to begin with and I've got plenty more. If ya ever do wanna take up shop in Dakota after you finish your thing in Jump City I'll mail yer manservant Mama Benu's card. There's a lot of superpowered youth in the city to corrupt if that little bird never comes around."

"I'll keep that in mind."

And with that, the witch erupted into a cloud of nightjars that scattered over Lake Dakota and into the darkness. The client bowed and melted into a cloud of black smoke that flowed towards downtown before becoming too thin to see. Mr. Willson for his part put his hands in his pockets and started heading back to the hotel he was staying at.

A black mist hovers over the main lab of the Alva Industries company in the wee hours of the morning at the tail end of the late night shift. Slowly and deliberately it seeped into the building through the air vents to a hidden computer room. There the mist coalesced into a hefty blond man in a white suit and rose-colored glasses. The man stepped over the tubes pumping the purple fluid leaking from the central supercomputer to sit at the helm. Thick fingers flying over the keyboard he typed:

 _CODE XANA_

The computer flared to life and the man quickly pulled back his hands to avoid the crackle of red lightning that flashed through the keyboard. A glowing red eye filled the monitor and stared him down. Eventually, the lightning stopped and a message appeared on the computer screen.

 _ **EXPLAIN**_

 _Call me Wirewolf, I am a friend. From the future. I have a business proposition for you._

Done typing the man pulled back his hands just in case the computer tried to electrocute him again. He knew how fickle and homicidal this ai could be. After a few moments, it responded.

 _ **CONTINUE**_

With that invitation, Wirewolf typed his out his plot and the benefits to a curious machine.


End file.
